


Beat Your Heart Out

by luminousbluebells



Category: Grey's Anatomy
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Canon Compliant, Episode: s05e14 Beat Your Heart Out, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Gap Filler
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-06
Updated: 2020-12-06
Packaged: 2021-03-09 20:42:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27912475
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luminousbluebells/pseuds/luminousbluebells
Summary: Filling in the blanks of what happened with Cristina and Owen at the end of s5e14, "Beat Your Heart Out."Warning: contains an extensive section describing what Owen feels during his panic attack.
Relationships: Owen Hunt/Cristina Yang
Kudos: 10





	Beat Your Heart Out

CRISTINA

They spot each other across the hall, and time is in slow motion.

He smiles at her, and she smiles at him. As if having reached some silent consensus, they simultaneously start to walk slowly towards each other. 

She bites her lip. He moves his hand to the pocket of his lab coat, looking at her so deeply she feels as if he is undressing her with his eyes... 

But then his eyes shift just past her, and all the color drains from his face. His mischievous expression from mere seconds ago completely vanishes. His eyes go wide and he blinks, looking frozen in shock—but only for a second. Before Cristina can ask him what’s happening, Owen immediately bolts down the hallway. 

She watches him go for a few seconds, baffled. And then, because apparently she just can't stay away from this man, she hurries to follow. 

OWEN 

He’s never been the guy who runs. That’s part of what the army was about—standing tall and confronting danger, being brave. But right now, “brave” is not gonna happen for him. Every time he blinks, he sees her face behind his closed eyes and he wants more than anything to get as far away from this place as possible.

And so he runs to the nearest empty room and slams into the door to open it. The sound of the shades rattling seems far away as the sound of his own gasping breaths fills his ears. His heart is pounding, and his chest feels like it’s bound by ropes so tight that his lungs just can’t fully expand. 

He knows, as a doctor he knows what’s happening, knows what he needs to do, but god, it’s just too terrifying to think clearly when you’re the one who can’t breathe. All he needs is some time, just a few minutes to get control of himself and convince his brain to think something other than 'no no no no' and 'not now' and 'I can’t do this.' He can handle this himself.

But then Cristina bursts into the room. She looks him up and down, and he immediately regrets that she had to see this. It registers that he’s going to have to tell her, and that just makes him spiral further into the airless void he has fallen into. He knows she’s saying something, probably asking what in the hell is wrong with him, but his head is starting to feel tingly from lack of oxygen and he can’t really focus on anything other than the panic that is engulfing his whole body. He turns away from her, muttering apologies and excuses. Even his own voice sounds distant in his ears.

Cristina is alarmed now, and Owen wants more than anything for her to just leave the room. But she’s still talking, so he tries.

“L-leave me alone, I c—“ he struggles. His throat burns. “I-I saw someone, someone I...” —he swallows hard— “knew. I can’t do this, I can’t, just… please, go away.”

CRISTINA

“What is going on—?” When Cristina enters the room and sees the state Owen is in, her demeanor transforms from simple confusion to intense concern. 

“Sorry,” Owen says, turning away from her.

“What happened?” Cristina demands. What terrible event had occurred in those few seconds between their shared flirtatious gaze and the obvious distress Owen was in now? She knew he had problems after the incident on the night of their intended first date, but she had never seen him like this at the hospital. He was always exceedingly professional at work.

“Sorry, I can’t—” As he tries to move away from her, she can see his badge trembling from the too-fast movement of his chest as he gasps for air. 

“You—you’re shaking!” She tries to see his face, to figure out what sent him into this attack. “What—”

“L-leave me alone, I c—” he talks over her, his eyes flitting around the room, not focusing on anything, especially not her. “I…I saw someone, someone I…knew. I can’t do this, I can’t, just… please, go away.“ 

Owen is gesturing wildly, another sign to Cristina that he is spiraling and needs her help. His movements are usually precise and intentional—she has never seen him flail like this. He is not okay, and she knows better than to give in to his wishes and leave him. What she needs to do is help him start breathing again, as soon as possible.

“Okay, easy…” she says, trying to wrap her mind around the wild scene she is now a part of. Owen goes to lean on the shelving unit full of supplies with and bends over, trying to catch his breath. Remembering her experience with Dr. Dixon earlier that day, Cristina has an idea. 

“Okay. It’s all right,” she says, a new conviction in her voice. Cristina unclips her ID badge and puts it down. “Here… it’s okay,” she says again, and goes to wrap her arms around him.

OWEN

As soon as he feels Cristina’s soft hands touch him, his whole body flinches and shakes her off. He can’t think properly anymore; with his brain scraping by on tiny bits of oxygen, he can’t explain the reasoning behind his words, but he can’t stop them from escaping his mouth either.

“I don’t want this.”

He just knows this isn’t what he wanted, this isn’t how he wanted this night to go. This isn’t the side of him he wants to show Cristina more of. He doesn’t want to deal with his old life, with… her, and everything her presence entails. He just can’t face everything that he’s been avoiding at all costs. 

“I can’t do this now.”

Everything he’d tried to put in his past is crashing over him like a waterfall and he just doesn’t want it, he can’t deal with it all right now, not when he stands to lose Cristina, the one person who’d been helping him, the one person who makes him forget. He doesn’t want the world he’s tried so hard to leave behind to poison the new one he’s found and leave him with nothing but this pain that is searing in his chest—

CRISTINA

“No!” Owen wrenches his arm away from her. “No, I don’t want this—”

“Okay,” she says soothingly, but she knows she can’t stop. Dr. Dixon’s explanation of how to relax the sympathetic nervous system fresh in her mind, Cristina takes a breath then quickly reaches around Owen’s shoulders from behind, clasping her hands together across his chest as tightly as she can. She can feel the tension coiling in his muscles as he flinches at her touch.

“I don’t want this, no!” Owen protests loudly again, trying to remove her hands. The weakness of his attempt worries Cristina even more—she knows how strong he is, how easy it should have been for him to shake her off. She can feel the pace of his already shallow breaths increase, but she pulls her arms around him even more tightly. As much as she hates seeing him in this much pain, she’s determined. This will help him. 

She starts to explain her plan. “Okay, I’m-I’m applying deep pressure here, to relax—“

“I can’t do this now!” 

Cristina doesn’t understand what Owen is trying to say. But he needs him to hear her, to understand, so she pushes aside the desire to give in—to let go and not have to hear the panicked tone of his voice anymore. “—to relax your sympathetic nervous system. It’ll decrease your metabolic rate—“

“I don’t want this…” Owen whimpers, still struggling. 

She presses on. “You will feel more panicked at first. You’ll try to resist it—” he is gasping now, his hands flexing and grasping at hers — “you’ll try to resist it, but eventually you will feel your pulse rate slow…”

He writhes desperately in her grasp.

“…Your pulse rate slow.” 

“I don’t want this,” he cries. 

“It’s okay,” Cristina’s heart breaks at the pain in his voice. He tries twice more to wrench himself away from her grasp, but the lack of oxygen is making him increasingly weak and she steadies him within her arms with relative ease.

“It’s okay. Your breath will come easier,” she soothes, as he keeps saying “I don’t want this,” between gasping sobs that are sounding more and more broken. Cristina whispers now. “Your breath will come easier.”

He stops struggling, surrendering to the feeling of her arms around him. She can feel his chest rise and fall as his breath hitches. “Okay…” she says. “Okay…”

With one last “I don’t…” Owen keens over, sobbing silently.

Cristina breathes one last “okay,” more to herself than to Owen.

They stand like that for who knows how long, Owen gasping for breaths and trying to fill his lungs, Cristina pressing herself to his back. She’s reminded of the story he had told her while he was standing soaked and fully dressed in her shower—his best surgery, “a body full of holes.” She thinks she understands how he felt now. Owen’s heart is full of holes, and by holding him tight to her, Cristina is the only thing keeping him from bleeding out.

She’s not sure when the change happens, but eventually she finds that he is now clinging to her, not the other way around. She turns him in her arms so they are facing each other in a more traditional embrace. He takes a deep but shuddering breath, then buries his face in the crook of her neck as another round of sobs overtakes him. 

He clutches her like a lifeline. 

OWEN

When the oxygen comes flooding back and his brain catches up with everything has just happened, it’s like a dam bursts inside him. Because here he is, with all his problems, and she knows just what to do. Even when he was pleading with her to be left alone in his misery, she stayed, and she held him. And so he cries, because he wants to stay in her arms forever and never have to face the rest of the world. Because he has lost so many people, because he sees his dead friends in his dreams. Because he hasn’t even told his mom that he’s back yet. Because he had abandoned Beth, and he now he is going to have to face it, and he doesn’t think he can handle it. Because he knows he owes Cristina the whole truth, and after this he doesn’t think he could bear to lose her. Because since he came back, he has been aimless and distraught and desperately lonely, and being in her arms he feels cared for. Safe.

He just wants to hide away from the world and let her hold him forever.

CRISTINA

Cristina knows how crying like this wears a person out, and she also knows that Owen hardly sleeps on a good day. Pretty soon, he is gonna crash, and hard. 

The on-call room they talked in that morning (it feels like days ago) is nearby. It’ll probably be a bit of a struggle, but she needs to get him there so he can properly calm down and get some rest, and she can keep an eye on him.

She raises one of her hands to his head, stroking his hair gently as his breathing starts to slow again. He sniffles and starts to relax into her. “Hey,” she says quietly. “I’m gonna take you to an on-call room so you can get some rest, okay?”

He nods into her shoulder, but when she goes to open the door he makes a small sound of protest. Then she realizes—he doesn’t want anyone else to see him like this. He doesn’t like people seeing him broken. When people ask, he always smiles and says he’s doing just fine. But now Cristina has seen his broken parts; he has decided to trust her with them. She needs to treat them with care.

She opens the blinds and peeks out the window. “It’s okay,” she says to him. “There’s no one in the hall, and the on-call room is really close. It’ll only take a minute, then you can rest.”

Owen takes a deep breath, and looks up at Cristina with red-rimmed eyes. “Okay,” he says. His voice is small and raw from crying. She strokes his cheek with her thumb and smiles at him for a moment, then opens the door and leads the two of them out into the hall. 

This short walk can’t be more different than the one across the catwalk that morning. What was electrifying space and mystery and anticipation has been crushed into desperate, too-tight grasps and completely raw vulnerability. She keeps one arm around his waist and reaches for his hand with the other; his usually casual gait has turned stiff and rigid, and he looks at the ground as they walk. She whispers words of encouragement in his ear.

When they make it to the on-call room without running into anyone, Cristina breathes a sigh of relief and guides Owen toward the bed. Ellis’s diary sits on the nightstand, where she’d left it earlier that day. She goes to move her arm from around him to help him take off his lab coat, but he clings to her. “Please stay,” he says, his eyes pleading too. His voice breaks a little. “Please.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Cristina says softly. His expression relaxes. “But you shouldn’t wear your lab coat to bed.” She pulls up on his lapels, and he obediently holds his arms down and away from his body so she can pull the lab coat off of him. She goes to hang it up, and when she comes back to Owen, who had not moved an inch, his eyelids are drifting closed. She gently places her hand on his cheek.

“Hey, let’s get some rest,” she whispers to him.

Owen’s “okay,” is nearly inaudible.

Cristina climbs onto the bed, and Owen follows, laying his head on her chest, draping his arm across her midsection and cuddling into her. A warm, fuzzy feeling blooms in Cristina's chest.

“’m so tired,” he mumbles into her scrubs.

She reaches a hand up to stroke his hair. “I know. You can sleep now, I’ll be here,” she says softly.

“Stay with me?”

“I’ll stay with you.”

“Keep th’ dreams away,” he whispers, already half asleep. She smiles a little at how much he sounds like a young child, but her heart aches for the knowledge of the horrors he relives so often.

“Okay,” she whispers. The weight of his head on her chest as she breathes in and out is comforting, and Cristina imagines that the last sound Owen hears before he drifts asleep is the the steady beating of her heart.


End file.
